


The Deepest Secret Nobody Knows

by Rainne



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, I am not one of those people, I do plan for there to eventually be smut though, I have heard that there are people who plan and outline their fics before they start writing, I'm just warning you ahead of time, P.S. most of the pairings are background, The author would like to state for the record that I have no idea what I am doing, This is probably going to be terrible, just so you know, send help, so don't get too attached
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-08-14
Packaged: 2018-02-07 12:41:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1899420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainne/pseuds/Rainne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As he attempts to re-integrate into the world, Bucky Barnes needs two things: first, a place to lie low with people who can help him; second, a chance to re-learn who he is and what he stands for.  And though he and Steve Rogers love each other like brothers, Avengers Tower just isn't the place for that. </p><p>It just so happens, though, that Steve knows somebody who <i>does</i> have a place for Bucky.  The fact that it comes with a ready-made team and a chance to wreak vengeance upon HYDRA is one added bonus.  The pretty biochemist in the lab is another.</p><p>
  <b>This fic is currently on hiatus due to author-muse power dynamic struggles.  It will return soon.</b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

e.e. cummings

~* PROLOGUE *~

Following the destruction of the Triskellion and the Project Insight helicarriers, Steve Rogers (also known as Captain America) teams up with Sam Wilson (also known as Falcon) in a globe-crossing quest to locate and coax Bucky Barnes (also known as the Winter Soldier) in from the spy's euphemistic cold.

Barnes doesn't make it an easy job. He was trained - or perhaps a better term would be _programmed_ \- as an assassin, so staying in the shadows and passing unnoticed are things he does with the same ease as breathing. Even after the spectacle in Washington, and despite the fact that he wears a fairly noticeable metal arm, when Rogers checks in with his teammate Tony Stark (also known as Iron Man) and Stark's sentient A.I, JARVIS, there are no recorded sightings of him turning up on any social or mainstream media sources. 

JARVIS dips his metaphorical toe into the available surveillance cameras, despite Rogers's discomfort with the idea of spying, but even then he cannot locate Barnes. It is as though, having dragged Rogers's unconscious body from the Potomac River, Barnes simply vanished into the aether.

Instead of running around, aimlessly looking under rocks, Rogers and Wilson sit down instead. Rogers holes himself up in Wilson's spare bedroom with a laptop provided by Stark - complete with a connection to JARVIS - and begins sifting through the information that Natasha Romanoff (who has many aliases) released onto the Internet. He has a vague idea of what he is looking for - bolt holes and places where a wounded and frightened Barnes might go to ground - and he begins by digging out the file that gives the locations of all the SHIELD safe houses in a fifty-mile radius of Washington.

Rogers and Wilson check them out together, one by one. They find that several of the places have been ransacked, stripped of weapons and currency stashes. In one, they find a torn pair of black pants that Rogers is fairly certain Barnes was wearing. In another, they find two dead men with HYDRA tattoos decomposing in a basement. In the vault of a closed-down bank, they find three more dead men in white button-up shirts and bow ties, and the wreckage of something that looks like it used to be a combination of a dentist's chair and a supercomputer. There is a word painted on the wall in that vault; the word is Месть. Rogers takes a picture of it with his camera phone; Romanoff later tells him that the word means _vengeance._ Rogers tries hard not to think about what the rusty brownish-red “paint” might have actually been.

Rogers and Wilson find themselves consistently one or two steps behind Barnes. Anywhere they go, they find that he has already been there. Often, he leaves carnage in his wake. Rogers, who is learning more and more information about what was done to the man who once was his best friend, finds it hard to blame him. “I think,” he says to Wilson one night, “in his position, I might be doing the same thing.”

“Huh,” Wilson replies. “I know damn well I would.”

Rogers thinks it is probably an accident, or just really good luck on his part, that he and Barnes end up at the same SHIELD safehouse in Silver Spring on a certain dark night in June. He comes in through the front door of the little cottage just as Barnes steps out of the bathroom, a towel slung around his hips and his hair still dripping. His metal hand, which clutches the edges of the towel together, gleams in the low light. They stare at each other across the small room for a moment.

Barnes speaks first. “You here to take me in?” he asks.

“Only if you want to come,” Rogers replies.

“You work for them,” Barnes accuses. His face is unreadable.

Rogers shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I don't. I worked for SHIELD, because I thought they were the good guys. They were supposed to be the ones watching out for the little guy. I honestly had no idea what was going on in the dark.”

There is a long silence. Then Barnes says, “They call you Captain America.”

“Yes,” Rogers agrees. “But you've always called me Steve.”

“I know you,” Barnes asserts. “But I don't _know_ you.”

“You did once,” Rogers assures him. “And you can again, if you want to. If you'll let me, I want to help.”

Barnes studies him for a long moment. Then he says, “If you try to hurt me, I'll kill you.”

“Bucky,” Rogers tells him, “I swear to you that I will never, ever deliberately hurt you.”

“Why do you call me Bucky?” Barnes asks.

“Because that's your name,” Rogers explains. “Your full name is James Buchanan Barnes; everybody always called you Bucky.”

There is another long silence. Then Barnes says, “I don't remember. But I... I want to.” He is silent for another moment, and then he looks down at the floor. “I should put clothes on,” he says. “I'm dripping on the hard wood.”

Rogers laughs softly, and there is a sudden shift in the atmosphere between the two of them. Both of them relax very slightly for the first time since they locked eyes, and Rogers reaches up to run a hand through his hair. “I'll wait here,” he says, and gestures at a chair. “Is that all right?”

Barnes nods. “Yeah,” he says. He turns then and goes into the bedroom, pushing the door shut behind him. Steve drops into the chair and pulls his phone out, sending a text message to Wilson and Romanoff.  _Finally found that thing I lost._

A moment later, a reply comes from Wilson. _Good. Bring it by when you get a chance._

Romanoff sends, _Be careful; it might still bite._

Rogers waits. A few minutes later, Barnes comes out of the bedroom. He's dressed in plain clothes: worn blue jeans and a plain white t-shirt with a long-sleeved button-up shirt over it. He is wearing a backpack on his back, and heavy black boots on his feet. He says, “All right.”

Rogers stands. “You okay riding on the back of my bike?”

“Yeah,” Barnes replies.

He takes Barnes to Wilson's house. They hole up in the spare bedroom for a few days, and in the course of those few days they learn that Barnes's overtaxed brain is trying very, very hard to reset itself. He has long periods of fugue, in which he sits and stares at nothing and responds to no stimuli; after those periods, he is often exhausted and usually complains of headache. In the dark of night, Barnes and Rogers often sit together on the bed, backs against the wall, playing games of true/not true while the world sleeps around them.

And then Barnes's bionic arm begins to malfunction.

It's almost funny at first, or it would be if not for the expression of horror on his face. He's standing in the bathroom preparing to brush his teeth when the hand holding his toothbrush suddenly makes a soft _fzzt_ sound. A responding electronic sort of _glick_ comes from somewhere near his elbow, and the entire arm snaps to the side, bending down at the elbow like a conscientious bicyclist signaling a stop. The toothbrush is mangled, caught in the suddenly clenched fist. Barnes is baffled.

“I don't know,” he says, while Rogers attempts to free the mangled toothbrush from his grasp. “I keep trying to straighten it and it won't go.”

“Might want to watch that pretty face,” Wilson suggests from across the living room. “That thing starts taking orders again at just the right time, you're looking at a broken nose.”

Rogers gives Wilson a dirty look, but he does move his face.

The next morning, the arm is across Barnes's chest in a mirror image of someone saluting the U.S. flag. Rogers says, “All right, we're going to need help.”

Barnes isn't best pleased about it, but Rogers assures him that he knows an engineer in New York whom they can trust. They throw some clothes into duffel bags and hop back onto his bike. Wilson, with a wave, assures them that he'll be along presently. He wants to get that same engineer to have a look at his broken wing pack. (Barnes apologizes about the wing pack. Wilson grins, claps him on the malfunctioning shoulder, and tells him not to worry about it.)

The trip up to New York is mostly uneventful; halfway there, the arm falls into Barnes's lap, totally limp, and refuses to respond to any commands. “Well,” Rogers comments, “at least it isn't sticking straight out at the shoulder.”

“Yeah,” Barnes agrees. “That'd be pretty fuckin' awkward the first time we tried to pass a semi.”

Upon arrival, they are greeted by JARVIS and escorted - insofar as a disembodied voice is capable of doing any escorting - directly into Stark's workshop on the ninetieth floor. That's when things get really awkward.

“So,” Stark says, as he pokes at the arm's plates with a screwdriver, “still murdery?”

“Not so much,” Barnes replies.

“Hmm.” Stark finds a plate that opens up in the armpit; it contains a release mechanism that allows the arm to be removed. “Jesus, this thing's heavy,” the engineer comments. “How the hell do you carry it?”

Barnes gives his now-empty side a glance. “The shoulder quarter is reinforced,” he says simply.

Rogers makes the connection almost immediately, and he gags softly. Stark just looks intrigued. “Ribs, clavicle, scapula?”

“Steel-vibranium alloy,” Barnes replies. “Can't travel by air since they started putting in metal detectors.”

“Hmm,” Stark says again. He heaves the arm up onto his workbench, works out how to open it, and starts poking. “So you did HYDRA's wetwork,” he says in a casual tone.

Barnes stiffens just a little bit, because that wasn't really a casual question. “Yeah,” he says carefully. “High level, high-difficulty targets.”

“Hmm,” Stark says again. He does something inside the arm and there is a sudden arc of electricity, accompanied by a loud _zap_. He swears, dropping his tool, and dances around for a second, holding his fingers.

Barnes leans forward and glances into the arm. “Oh, well,” he says. “That's slagged.” He looks over at Rogers and grins slightly. “Can't 'urt anybody now,” he says in a perfect south London accent. “I'm 'armless.”

Rogers chokes on laughter, coming over to take a look. The inside of the arm is, indeed, slagged. “Jesus, Stark,” he says. “I thought you said you knew what you were doing with this.”

“I do,” Stark replies. “I didn't realize they'd have it booby-trapped.”

“Well, now what?” Rogers asks. “He needs an arm!”

“I know he needs an arm!” Stark snaps. He retrieves his screwdriver from the floor and turns to face Barnes. “How high-level and high-difficulty was the head of the SSR?”

Barnes blinks. “Sorry, what?”

“You arranged a car accident,” Stark accuses. “December sixteenth of 1991. On Long Island.”

Barnes shakes his head slowly. “No,” he says. “No, I didn't. The last time I acted in the U.S., I was in Dallas. I don't know the date, but the target was a man riding in a convertible in a motorcade.” He closes his eyes for a moment, recalling. “He was wearing a black suit and there was a woman with him, dark hair, pink suit with a pillbox hat.”

“Jesus Christ,” Stark says, his eyes going huge. “You're talking about the Kennedy assassination.”

“Was that his name?” Barnes asks. “They didn't tell me.” He shrugs. “After that... there was a glitch in the programming. The asset failed to report to the extraction site; it had to be recovered. It was found three months later in Brooklyn and was unable to explain its presence there. The programming had to be rewritten, and it was determined that it was too risky to send the asset back to the U.S.”

“Jesus,” Rogers murmurs, crossing himself. “You were trying to get away.”

“The asset was nonfunctional,” Barnes corrects, his voice tight. “The asset is not James Buchanan Barnes. The asset has no name, no identity, no wants or needs or desires. The asset is a tool.”

“And you're not the asset,” Rogers extrapolates. “You're Bucky.”

“Affirmative,” Barnes says. He looks at Stark. “And I didn't kill whoever you're thinking I killed.”

Stark's jaw tightens for a moment. “My parents,” he says finally.

Barnes nods. “I'm sorry,” he says. “But that wasn't me.”

Stark nods back. “All right,” he says. “Let's make you a new arm. How do you feel about hot rod red?”

“Fairly negative,” Barnes replies. “I'm kind of used to the way it looks now.”

Stark begins to work with a holographic image projected in front of him. “Well, sure, but don't you want to jazz it up a little bit? Oh, we could put a racing stripe up the back of it.”

“Or we could _not_ ,” Barnes suggests, moving to the side to examine the hologram. He nudges a piece with his finger, astonished and delighted when it responds to his touch, and begins to help, displaying a knowledge of cybernetics that is frankly astonishing to both himself and to Stark.

“Laser scope?” Stark offers. “Maybe a built-in small-rocket launcher?”

Barnes grins. “Now you're speakin' my language.”

It takes three days to design the arm to spec; Stark wants to make it lighter, but Barnes is accustomed to the weight and is legitimately concerned that a change in the weight could give him problems when he's trying to use it. “I'm already used to it,” he says. “If you change it, I'll end up tippin' over all the time. You can laugh like you think I'm kiddin', but I remember when they first put the damn thing on and I was fallin' over constantly because I had to learn how to stand and walk different.”

“I noticed that,” Rogers says softly. When both men turn to look at him, he clarifies: “I noticed that there's a difference in your stance and stride.” He shrugs. “I've known you since I was five years old, Bucky. I know how you walk, I know how you talk. I know how you stand when you're facing your Ma when she's mad, and I know how you stand when you're facing down the Mueller boys from the next block. I _know_ you.”

“Huh,” Barnes says softly. Then he says, “Maybe... maybe it'd be okay if it was a little bit lighter.”

Stark smirks. “How much lighter?”

“You're the asshole jammin' a rocket launcher in there; how much lighter can it get?”

“You're asking me about using twenty-first century materials and technology to replace something that was last upgraded at the start of the Cold War,” Stark replies. “I can probably get it within a couple pounds of your other arm, with no loss of function.”

“Bullshit you can,” Barnes replies.

As expected, Stark takes that as a challenge. Barnes spends two weeks learning how to stand and walk without tipping over. Stark has JARVIS compile security footage of Barnes falling - over things, onto things, into things, down the stairs - and uploads it to YouTube. He titles it “Drunk asshole can't walk.” It goes viral.

In retaliation, Barnes convinces JARVIS to make a compilation of every time Tony has had to follow Pepper through the communal floor of the tower explaining himself and begging for forgiveness. He titles it “Dumb asshole can't girlfriend” and uploads it to YouTube. It goes viral twice.

Once Barnes is comfortable in his own form again, he and Rogers take to sparring on the gym floor. When Thor (who has no other aliases) comes back from Asgard, with his scientist girlfriend and her intern in tow, he joins in on the fun. The intern - Darcy Lewis - often tags along to the gym, taking video and photographs on her cell phone, which she posts to Tumblr. She occasionally likes to brag about her follower count, but no one really cares until the day that Rogers catches one of her videos on the national news.

After he watches the segment - three times, to make sure he didn't miss something important - he asks JARVIS to locate Barnes. A few minutes later, he is knocking on Lewis's apartment door. He isn't totally surprised - though he is rather disappointed - when she opens the door dressed in a t-shirt and Barnes's boxer shorts; the spark between the two of them was fairly obvious the first time they met. He flushes anyway, but Lewis just shakes her head at him. “It's not a thing, Steve,” she says softly, not meeting his eyes as she lets him in. “Haven't you ever felt like you needed somebody, but you couldn't have them, so you'd take what you could get?” Then she pauses and mutters to herself, “Of course you haven't. What was I thinking.”

He considers her words, and the way she won't meet his eyes. He grips her wrist as she makes to pass him, and he says, “Yeah, I have,” very softly.

She looks up at him for just a second, and he sees a complicated mix of emotions on her face. Then he releases her and she goes into the bedroom. He hears the shower run when she opens the bathroom door and calls out, “Steve's here; he wants to talk to you.”

When the two of them emerge from her bedroom a few minutes later, they're both properly dressed. Lewis goes into the kitchen and gets cans of lemonade out of the refrigerator; when she returns, JARVIS is running the news footage on her television.

“ _The identity of the third man in this video is unknown,”_ the newscaster's voice is saying, _“but there is some speculation that he may have been involved in the April terrorist attacks in Washington, D.C.”_ A still from a security camera in Washington, exposing the old arm with its red star, is projected on the screen side-by-side with a still from Lewis's video, exposing Barnes's new arm, with a version of Rogers's shield in place of the red star. 

Rogers pulls his phone out of his pocket and calls Stark. Stark comes down immediately and watches the news clip again. He pulls his phone out and calls Pepper Potts. Potts has been in meetings all morning and has not seen the video; JARVIS sends it to her personal tablet and she watches it while on the speaker phone.

After it runs, there is silence while she thinks. Then she says, “Let me make a couple of phone calls. I'll get back to you.” And she hangs up.

Lewis takes a deep breath. “I'm really sorry,” she begins, but Stark cuts her off.

“Hey,” he says, “I've had _way_ more embarrassing things on the news about myself. This is nothing. This is speculation, and we can spin everything.”

“Still,” she tries again.

This time, Barnes reaches out and puts a finger over her lips. “It ain't a big fuckin' deal, doll,” he tells her. “It was bound to happen sooner or later anyway.” He gives her a grin.

“Bucky's right,” Rogers says. “Besides, it's not like anybody said you shouldn't post videos online. And Tony did it first, anyway. So don't worry about it.”

She seems to relax after that.

A few minutes later, Potts calls back. She's got Stark Industries's Public Relations department on the problem, working out how to spin Barnes's identity and presence in a way that isn't exactly a lie but conceals the greater truth, which is too involved for a forty-five second news bite and frankly too nuanced for most of the viewing public to comprehend anyway. In the meantime, though, PR has suggested that it might be best for Barnes to lay low for awhile.

“So I got in touch with Phil,” Potts concludes, “and he's willing to take Bucky, if Bucky wants to go.”

This is something they have to sit down and talk about. There's been a lot of discussion over the past few weeks about whether or not Barnes can or should be adopted onto the team and made an official Avenger; most everyone is in favor of the idea, but Barnes himself has had reservations, mostly because of his history. He feels very strongly about the idea that Captain America or Captain America's team might be tainted by association with the Winter Soldier. 

“This isn't a bad idea,” Barnes says, sipping from his can of lemonade. “Gives me a chance to get out in the field and make sure I'm up to scratch without running the risk of screwing up something on the global scale. At least if I mess up out there, it ain't the last line of defense between New York and the invading alien army or somethin'.”

“I think it sounds like a good idea,” Lewis encourages him. “As long as it's something you want.”

Rogers looks back and forth between them, tucking away this exchange for later review. They certainly don't  _ look _ like a loving couple who's about to be separated by thousands of miles and dangerous missions. 

Later that evening, after Barnes's agreement has been transmitted to Phil Coulson (Director of SHIELD, for whatever that's worth), Rogers finds Barnes alone and asks him straight out. “What's the deal with you and Darcy?”

Barnes grins, shaking his head slightly. “It's just sex, Steve,” he says. “I ain't the one for her.”

The next day, a helicopter comes for Barnes. It's piloted by a small Asian woman who introduces herself as Melinda May (also known as The Cavalry, but don't ever call her that). Barnes is ready when May arrives; he retrieves his bags and puts his new StarkPhone into his pocket and shares a long last kiss with Lewis and gives Rogers a tight hug. He will eventually return - this separation is not forever - but things will be different when he comes back.  _ He _ will be different when he comes back.

This is not a bad thing.

He tosses his bags into the chopper and climbs in, strapping himself into the copilot's seat and pulling on the headset May offers him and resting his hands in his lap. “Ready when you are,” he tells her.

She nods, and the chopper lifts off, and Barnes can see, just before they leave the tower behind, Lewis edging closer to Rogers, reaching out to put her hand on his arm in sympathy and support. He grins. It's about time that girl got off her ass and went after what she really wanted.

Phil Coulson's team is mobile; they operate out of a transport aircraft they refer to as “the bus”. May and Barnes meet the bus at a small private airstrip in eastern New Jersey. They enter through the cargo bay, and the team is there to meet them. Coulson is a consummate g-man: average height, average weight, and average looks. There is nothing average about him, and Barnes respects him immediately. Antoine Triplett (whom they call Trip) shakes Barnes's hand firmly and says, “I don't usually advertise, but my grandpa was Gabe Jones.” 

“Hell yeah,” Barnes replies, grinning broadly. “I can see him all over your face. You got the same eyes.”

The little brown-haired Skye (no last name) reminds Barnes a lot of Darcy, only with her hard edges in different places. He likes her immediately.

Leo Fitz (just called Fitz) is a conundrum; he's struggling through a lot of physical limitations that have to be worked around. He sometimes has to use a machine to speak for him, and he has a lot of trouble walking, but he's clearly a brilliant engineer and he doesn't seem to have much trouble with his hands, so Barnes feels like he can probably trust the kid to repair his arm if need be.

And then there's Jemma Simmons. When Barnes is introduced to her, he finds himself fascinated in a way that he hasn't been in a long time. She's a biochemist, she tells him, with a couple of extra PhDs in things like neurology and biotechnology. Like Fitz, she's fascinated by his arm; unlike Fitz, she also seems to be fascinated by him. She gets stuttery and a bit shy when he grins at her, and he notices out of the corner of his eye that Fitz's eyes get narrow and Trip and Skye nudge each other like kids when that happens. 

But they have places to go, so Coulson sends May to the cockpit and Skye and Trip offer to give Barnes the nickel tour of the plane. Fitz and Simmons return to their lab, and as Barnes follows his tour guides out of the cargo bay, he glances over his shoulder, through the glass wall of the lab. 

Simmons is watching him go, and he grins at her one more time, just to watch her face go red, as he leaves.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY FOR TAKING SO LONG TO GET THIS OUT.
> 
> You guys, I swear, I had the best of intentions. And then I realized I'd started this story literally the week before my five week summer class started (three hours a day, three days a week, and literally over 100 pages of reading per night). AND THEN I got distracted by Deus Ex, which is ALL AENARIA'S FAULT. So this story has languished, and I am so sorry. But here is chapter two, and I hope you enjoy it!

Bucky's quarters, which opened off of the main communal area in the center of the plane, turned out to be a tiny space containing a bunk, a fold-out table, walls lined with cabinets, and a tiny, private, RV-sized bathroom. He had just enough space to turn around in; these rooms were obviously not meant for anyone to spend a lot of time in.

Once Trip and Skye left him to himself, he decided to make himself at home. He unpacked first, hanging and folding and tucking away. It wasn't a bad space, he had to admit, for all that it was oppressively tiny; pressure releases on the cabinets meant that there were no handles for him to whack his head on, and the silver finish of the walls, while it could be seen as industrial or even prisonlike, actually reflected the light that came in through the frosted window, making the tiny space brighter than it otherwise could have been.

He ducked into the tiny bathroom - it was literally just big enough for him to turn around in - and tucked his shaving kit and toiletries away. Then he stepped back out into the bed space. He glanced out into the communal area and saw no one, so he took the chance to slide his door shut. He seated himself on the bunk and dropped the table down, then picked up the laptop Tony gave him and flipped it open.

It booted up, and a program called Skype logged itself on. He frowned at it for a moment, wondering why that happened and whether it was something he should be concerned about. And then he jumped, because the computer had emitted the sound of a phone ringing. A box popped up in the middle of the screen informing him that he was receiving a call from Darcy, and asking whether he wished to accept or decline. He clicked  _ accept _ and there was a moment's pause, and then a window opened up and Darcy was grinning at him from what looked like the window seat in the common room. “Hey!” she said.

“Did you do this?” he asked.

She winked. “Guilty as charged. I figured you'd want a way to keep in touch, and Skype is  _ so much better _ than regular phone calls because you can see the person you're talking to! It's the next best thing to being in the same room.”

He leaned back against the wall, grinning. “So, any chance I can get you to give me a striptease on this thing, doll?”

She cackled at him. “Sorry, Soldier! Those days are over, as you well know.”

From the background, Bucky heard Tony's voice. “Somebody say something about a striptease?” He appeared in the camera's view, leaning over Darcy's shoulder. “Hey, it's Bucky. Homesick already? I feel like I should point out that it's been less than four hours.”

Bucky gave Tony the finger, and Darcy planted her hand on his face and shoved him out of the frame. Then she looked up, past the camera. “Steve!” she said. “Bucky's still alive; I have proof.”

“Why wouldn't he be alive?” Steve said from somewhere out of the frame, but he came around at Darcy's insistence and leaned over her shoulder. “Oh,” he said. “Hey, Buck.”

“Hey, Stevie,” Bucky replied, giving his best friend a crooked smile as Darcy handed off the laptop to him and stepped away. “Hey, you'll never guess who's on this boat with me. This kid Antoine Triplett – they call him Trip – he's Gabe's grandson.”

“No shit,” Steve said, grinning broadly. “Gabe's grandson, seriously?”

“Yeah. Looks just like him.” He smiled slightly. “Kinda feels like old times.”

“I bet,” Steve replied. He reached out, his fingers brushing the computer screen. “It's not gonna be the same around here without you,” he said softly.

“Of course it won't,” Bucky replied easily. “The level of awesome in that tower is down by about a thousand now.”

Steve laughed. “You sound like Darcy.”

“Yeah, speakin' of her,” Bucky said, lowering his voice. “Steve. Make your move.”

Steve's eyes cut upward, away from the camera and presumably in Darcy's direction. “I dunno, Buck,” he began, but Bucky cut him off.

“Steve,” he said, his voice firm, “I'm tellin' you this because I love you like a brother. That girl is totally gone on you, and she's a tiger in the sack.  _ Make your move. _ ”

Steve's eyes narrowed. “I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of bein' your follow-on.”

Bucky snorted. “Follow-on, my ass,” he said. “If anything, I was the openin' act. Now get your shit together.” With that, he reached up and decisively shut the lid of the laptop.

He sat there for a moment, contemplating the computer, and then grinned. Darcy had been right about Skype's superiority; he hadn't had that much fun hanging up on someone since wall receivers went out of fashion. He tossed the laptop aside onto the bed, folded the table back up against the wall, and opened his door, stepping out into the common area.

Coulson and Skye looked up at his entrance. “Perfect timing,” Coulson said. “We were going to need you in just a minute.”

“Yeah?” Bucky asked. He flexed his metal hand. “Need a bottle opened?”

Skye laughed, and Bucky winked at her. Coulson, poker face in place, said, “We have a mission.”

_ That was quick, _ Bucky thought, but he was actually sort of grateful. He was sure some people would rather have a chance to settle in or something, but he had never been fond of sitting around when there was work to be done, and with HYDRA still out there, there was definitely a lot of work to be done. “Talk to me,” he said, going into work mode. “What's the mission?”

Skye did something on her computer that made the nearby holo screen light up. Bucky and Coulson move toward it, and Coulson pointed out the first piece of data. “We're headed here,” he said. “Orange Beach, Alabama.”

“Beach town,” Bucky replied. “What's there?”

“We've had rumors of a HYDRA cell operating down there, and possibly with access to alien tech.”

Bucky grinned slightly. “So we're gonna bust some heads,” he said.

“Essentially, yes,” Coulson agreed. “And we need to find out what sort of tech they're in possession of, if anything at all.”

Bucky nodded. He studied the map. “You sure about the town?”

“That's where the activity has been,” Coulson replied. “Why?”

Bucky pointed at the map. “Because about ten minutes or so east on this state highway, just across the line, there's a city called Pensacola, and I know for a fact there's a HYDRA base there.”

Skye joined them at the map as Bucky enlarged it. “What does HYDRA want with the beach?” she asked.

“Nothin',” Bucky replied. “They want these bases. Check it out.” He touched a spot. “Here's a Navy base where they train aircraft maintenance and aircrew specialties, as well as naval flight surgeons, and aviation experimental psychologists.” Another touch. “Here's an Air Force base with a major operational support component, a military airport, and a minimum security federal prison.” A third touch. “Here's another Navy base that trains intel operatives.” Two more touches. “Here and here, two more Air Force bases within less than an hour's drive. There's also an international airport and a major state university.”

Skye stared at him. “How do you know so much about the area?”

“I told you,” Bucky said as Trip entered the room and came over to join them. “There's a HYDRA base there.”

“At the beach?” Trip asked, looking at the map. “There's HYDRA at the beach? Man, those assholes really  _ are _ everywhere.”

Bucky snorted.

“Do you have that level of detail memorized for all the HYDRA bases you know about?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Just the ones where I had to...” He paused, searching for words. “...where I had missions,” he finally finished.

Coulson raised an eyebrow. “Elimination?”

“Infiltration,” Bucky replied, shaking his head. “The intel school.”

“Ah,” Skye said softly, nodding. “So where's the HYDRA base?”

Bucky frowned at the map. He held up a hand, hesitating for a moment, before finally pointing. “Here,” he said.

Coulson frowned at the spot. “Are you certain?”

Bucky nodded. “It's the only way they could manage it,” he explained. “You can't have an underground base in a pace where the water table is only three feet down.”

“Still,” Trip said, sensing Coulson's concern. “That's right in the middle of downtown.”

“I know,” Bucky replied. “That's what makes it so genius. Nobody would assume there was anything secret there. It's got a wide, flat roof, so if you need to move something in or out in a hurry, you can helicopter it in. And if you had your people dress in fatigues, well, in a town like that, who looks twice at guys in military uniforms?”

“Huh,” Coulson said, tapping his chin with one finger. “That is fairly genius.”

“So are we going to take out the base first or investigate whatever's going on at the beach?” Skye asked.

Bucky rubbed at the back of his neck for a moment. Then he shared a glance with Trip. “Both?” he suggested.

Trip nodded. “I like both. Both is good.”

Bucky grinned broadly. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “You are definitely Gabe's boy.”

~*~

Bucky and May went downtown while Coulson and Trip went to the beach. The building in question was a historical one, older than Bucky himself, and had been a Masonic lodge at some point, judging by the carvings on the outside of the building. Bucky made a face. "That just makes me uncomfortable," he said.

May raised an eyebrow. "You're not one of those people who thinks the Masons are secret Satanists or something, are you?"

Bucky scoffed. "Hell no, I don't buy that bullshit," he replied. "Nah, my Pa was a mason, and so was his Pa, and my uncles and all. I probably woulda been one too, if things had been different. So it's like... I dunno, it just kinda makes me mad, those HYDRA assholes in there."

May made a soft humming sound. "There's a fire escape in the back," she said.

"Sounds good," Bucky replied. "Second or third floor?"

"If we can make it to the third floor without detection," May said thoughtfully.

Bucky made a quick survey of the nearby rooftops. "I ain't seein' anything that's sendin' up red flags." He paused, frowning. "Though that by itself actually kinda makes me nervous. There oughta be _something._ "

May frowned as well. "Good point." She considered, rubbing thoughtfully at her chin. "Let's try the roof." Her eyes scanned the street. "From that building over there." She pointed at a bank that was located two buildings up. "We should be able to access this building that way."

Bucky nodded. "That sounds like a good idea."

They made their way casually up the sidewalk, vanishing neatly into the narrow alley between the bank building and its next neighbor and then making their way up the fire escape as quickly and silently as possible.

From the roof of the bank, they carefully examined their surroundings. There were no guards anywhere in sight, and all of Bucky's alarm bells were ringing. He could tell by the lack of expression on May's face that hers were, too. He took a deep breath. "Let me go first," he said.

Her eyes narrowed at him. "Why, because you're the man?"

He snorted. "No, why? Do I look like I need my ass kicked today?"

"Possibly."

He chuckled. "I'm a sniper. Long range with a scope I could outshoot you any day of the week, and I'll lay whatever amount of money you'd care to wager on that statement. But short range with a moving target, I'm only slightly better than average. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure it's been proven that you actually work better under those conditions. So I trust you not to blow my fool head off better than I trust me not to blow off yours. Okay?"

She studied him for a long second, and then, quite suddenly, her face broke into a sardonic half-smile. "Okay," she said. She pulled out her handguns, twirling them like a cowboy in a Western flick. He laughed softly, turned, got a couple feet of speed, and leapt across the three-foot gap between the two buildings, heading for the HYDRA base, crouched low.

No one attacked from behind the air conditioning unit. No one sniped him from a distance. No one, in fact, did anything at the roof level. Absolutely nothing happened. He made his way quietly to the other side of that building, waited for May to follow him across the gap, and then leapt again, this time landing solidly and almost silently on the roof of the base itself. He could see the huge H in the circle where small helicopters could land - _got that right,_ he thought smugly to himself - and not far away, the door that would grant him entry into the building itself.

Still there was no reaction from any manner of security force. Bucky felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. He stayed crouched for a moment, then he took a deep breath and stood up, making himself a perfect target. He stood stock still for a full forty-five seconds and absolutely nothing happened. He turned and looked at May. "Somethin' ain't right here," he called softly.

She joined him on the roof, wandering over to inspect the empty helipad. "You're right," she said, looking around. "Something is very, very wrong."

Bucky made his way over to the access point. A very new security system had been installed; it required a biometric scan. He touched his metal finger to the plate. The door hissed open.

May blinked. "It knows your metal hand?"

Bucky nodded. "That's where they put all the bios," he said. "Don't ask me why. Crazy fuckers."

"Crazy or stupid," May agreed, "especially considering that you're still in the system." She stepped up behind him, her guns at the ready. Bucky palmed his own weapons: Glock in one hand, hunting knife in the other. They entered the building on silent feet.

~*~

The location on the beach where the HYDRA activity had allegedly been spotted turned out to be a small vacation rental: a tiny cottage on a decent-sized piece of land that was surrounded by huge condominiums. Trip cocked an eyebrow at it from the parking lot of a crab shack just up the street. "You can tell when a piece of property's been in the family for more than thirty years," he commented.

Coulson nodded. "According to the property records, the current owner's father purchased the place in 1959, before Orange Beach boomed."

"Kinda makes you wonder why he's holding onto it," Trip murmured. "I mean, mostly undeveloped property that size would probably sell for a few million at least."

"At least," Coulson replied. He considered. "The thought occurs to me that Bucky said something about not building an underground base when the water table is so high."

"Yeah?" Trip asked.

Coulson nodded. "Trip, I'm having very ridiculous thoughts about James Bond villains right now."

Trip eyeballed the place again. "Huh," he said simply. Then he said, "Take a long time to build a place like that."

"Yes," Coulson said. "Perhaps a few years or more, on a deserted stretch of beach."

"With a house on top of it to disguise the entrance." Trip rubbed at the back of his head.

"Which might explain why it's booked solid through the end of the year," Coulson mused. "Only it doesn't appear to be currently occupied."

Trip nudged at Coulson's laptop. "What'd you say the owner's name was?"

"Her married name is Pace," Coulson replied. "But her father's name was Zimmer."

"Hmm," Trip said. "Zimmer, that's a German name, isn't it?"

"I do believe it is," Coulson affirmed.

They sat in silence for a long few minutes. Then Trip said, "Should we check in with Barnes and May or just start blowing shit up?"

Coulson laughed. "Let's wait to hear what they have to say." He checked his watch. "They're scheduled to check in with us in about ten more minutes. If anything interesting happens before they call, we'll move on that. Otherwise, it won't hurt to wait."

Trip sighed. "I guess."

They settled down in their seats and waited.

~*~

Bucky led the way down the staircase and into the third floor of the building. The lights were on as they passed down a narrow hallway, and there was a low electrical hum that indicated appliances of some kind still functioning, but otherwise there was no sound at all. They made it to a set of double doors, ornately carved and with some of the original gilding still in place, and they took up positions on either side. May holstered one of her guns, taking the other in both hands like a television cop. Bucky reached out and gently tried the handle of one door; it was unlocked.

He and May shared a look and he counted off with nods of his head _one - two - three_ and then snatched the door open. May stepped smoothly into the doorway, her gun up in a slightly forward-shifted Isosceles stance, and she covered the left side of the huge room beyond the doors even as Bucky took a knee and covered the right side from below her.

The room was empty.

Well, it wasn't _empty_ _;_ it was actually full of computers and medical-looking equipment and large refrigerated coolers and the kinds of things one might expect to find in a well-equipped biology laboratory. But there were no people visible anywhere. The two of them carefully cleared the room before holstering their weapons and taking a moment to look everything over, but there was definitely nobody there.

May got on the communicator with Skye. After some discussion, May pulled a small USB dongle out of one of her pockets, inserting it into one of the computers and then following Skye's commands to click here and type there. A moment later, Skye was in the lab's computer systems, uploading all of HYDRA's data. Bucky, meanwhile, got on his communicator with Fitz and Simmons, describing the equipment he was looking at and taking pictures on his cell phone for them to look at later. He made special note of one of the coolers; his description of its contents piqued Simmons's interest, and if they're able to leave the place without running for their lives, he wanted to bring some of it back for her. He thought she might like that.

Once Skye declared that she'd finished her upload, May retrieved her USB key and tucked it away. "Let's go see what's downstairs," she said to Bucky. He rounded out his conversation about the machinery with Fitz and took point again.

The second floor of the building was no more inhabited than the first. It contained several offices and a long room that appeared to have been used as a dining hall, but there were absolutely no people anywhere. "Okay, you know, this is fuckin' weird," Bucky said, as he and May took the opportunity for a fairly leisurely rifle through the contents of what appears to be the base commander's office. They snagged some kit bags from a supply closet and were simply taking everything that looked remotely useful or valuable while Skye uploaded even more data from the computer there.

"You're not wrong about that," May replied. "It makes me a bit nervous, to be honest."

"Makes me more'n a bit nervous," Bucky grumbled. "I feel like any second now I might step on a land mine."

"Do you want to check the other offices while I finish this upload with Skye?"

Bucky nodded. "Yeah. Let me know when you're done." He left May there, heading up the hallway to ransack the other offices as quickly as possible. He found very little of value, and within just a few minutes was heading back to May when she stepped out into the hallway. "Done?" he asked.

She nodded, and they both headed for the stairs to go back up. Bucky made a beeline across the lab space to collect as many of the samples out of the cooler for Jemma as he could stuff into the last empty kit bag. He then slung the bag across his back and gestured for May to head back up the stairs to the roof. She paused at the doorway. "I wonder if we ought to check out the ground floor, just in case."

Bucky shook his head. "That pharmacy's been there since the place was still a Masonic lodge," he said. "And even if they are connected, they won't have anything useful. It's too public."

May nodded, accepting this, and they headed back up to the roof. From there, it was a quick return trip back to the bank building and down the fire escape again, and then further up the street to the parking garage where they'd left their car. Once they were making their way out of downtown, May behind the wheel, Bucky activated his communicator and asked Skye to patch him through to Coulson.

~*~

Trip pushed the button on the dash that placed Bucky on speaker phone. "Hey, man," he said. "What's the word?"

"Word is, the place was empty."

Coulson blinked in surprise. "Empty?"

"Yeah," Bucky said. "Well, not _empty_ , but no people. All their stuff was still there: computers, equipment, files, whatever, but it was like everybody just stepped out for lunch and never came back."

Coulson looked thoughtfully at the unassuming little house across the street. It was starting to seem more and more likely that something unusual was going on in there. "All right. Take everything you have back to the bus, then meet us out here. I think we have something, and we could use the backup if we're going to go in."

"On the way, boss," Bucky replied. "ETA twenty to twenty-five."

"We're in the parking lot of the crab shack a block up," Coulson told him.

"Oh, that's a great idea," Bucky said, sounding suddenly very perky. "Get us a table; I'm starvin'."

The line went dead, and Trip choked on laughter.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warning:** Bit of graphic violence in this chapter, specifically one instance of what the US government likes to euphemistically call "enhanced interrogation".

Fitz and Jemma were in the lab when Bucky and May arrived back at the bus. They were only about ten minutes out from the empty HYDRA base, and the duffel Bucky was carrying was still leaking cold air when he slid out of the passenger seat of the car. He wasted no time in scooting across the cargo bay into the lab while May went looking for Skye; when Jemma looked up, he laid the duffel on the lab table in front of her. "Brought you a present," he said.

Bucky felt the skin on the back of his neck crawl just a little bit as Fitz's eyes narrowed at him again, but he ignored the young man, focusing on Jemma instead. She set aside the gadget in her hands and reached for the zipper of the duffel. "Oh," she said. "This is quite cold. Whatever - " she stopped, staring at him. "You never did."

He raised an eyebrow, contriving to arrange his face into the most innocent expression he could manage. "Did what?"

"Did you ransack the coolers in that HYDRA lab?" She pulled the zipper down, parting the black fabric, and squeaked. "You  _ did! _ Ooh, you grubby little sticky-pawed thing!" She beamed at him, scrabbling through the bag in delight. "This has all got to get right into the coolers, I'll have to catalog it later, oh, Agent Barnes, this is  _ wonderful _ , thank you ever so!"

He grinned then, pride squaring his shoulders and pushing his chin up like it always used to do when a girl got all excited about him bringing flowers or some little gewgaw of some kind. "Well, you're very welcome, Agent Simmons."

"I insist that you call me Jemma," she said, hefting the bag and hurrying over to a nearby cooler with an empty bottom shelf.

"Only if you call me Bucky," he replied, his grin taking on a little bit of a cocky twist.

She glanced at him over her shoulder, her eyes sparkling. "Deal." And then her cheeks went pink.

They stood there for a moment, just grinning at each other, until they were interrupted by May, who stuck her head in through the glass door. "Ready?" she said. "Coulson and Trip are waiting on us."

"Yeah, you got it," Bucky replied, turning smartly and moving to follow her. He paused in the doorway, glancing back over his shoulder toward Jemma. "Be seeing you later, Jemma," he offered.

She raised up just enough so that he could see her smile over the table. "Most definitely. Thank you again!"

The door swung shut behind Bucky, and he followed May back into the car. They backed out of the cargo bay, and then there was a soft click in the lab. A keyboard rattled, and then Fitz's computer voice spoke out. "I don't like him."

Jemma sighed softly. "You don't like anyone much, Fitz."

The inflections of the computerized voice were not perfect, but they still managed to convey Fitz's agitation. "I don't trust him. You know what he used to do! He did  _ wetwork _ , Jemma! That's  _ murder! _ For HYDRA!"

"Yes, I know that," Jemma replied, stowing the last of the items and closing the cooler. She stood and turned to face Fitz. "I also know, as well as you do, that he was brainwashed with electroshock and drugs and that he was forced into it. And then tortured and put into cryogenic storage. And do you think Captain America would have sent him to us if he was unsafe?"

"What if he's just fooling everyone? If he's still loyal to HYDRA and just waiting to learn all our secrets before killing us all?"

Jemma sighed softly, walking over to Fitz and wrapping her arms around his shoulders, giving him a gentle squeeze. "Fitz," she said softly, "I know you're worried. I know you're reluctant to trust anyone after Ward. And I don't blame you! He fooled all of us, and he hurt all of us. And he very nearly killed you, and now all this... I know it's difficult, and you've every right to be suspicious. But I trust Captain America; if he thought Bucky was at all dangerous, he'd never have sent him here."

Fitz pushed her away, grabbing for his crutches. He shoved his arms into the cuffs, wrapped his hands around the grips, and pushed himself away from the lab table. "He could be wrong," he ground out with his own voice. "Could be taken in. Friends before - he sees what he  _ wants _ to see." With that, he stormed from the lab, as well as he was able. Jemma watched him go, her heart aching. Aside from his continued physical struggles, she knew that he was still emotionally traumatized over Ward's betrayal, and she wished that there was something she could do to help him accept their new team member. Unfortunately, she knew that there wasn't; it would take time, and Bucky would have to prove himself to Fitz in whatever way was possible.

She sighed. It probably didn't help that she and Bucky had been blatantly flirting. After what he'd told her in the pod, when they'd been trapped under the water... She shook her head. She knew what he wanted, but she couldn't give it to him. She simply didn't feel the same way about him, and while she was sorry for him - she'd been in that position, and it was never fun - she couldn't force herself to feel an attraction that simply wasn't there. And it would be so unfair to him to try, and to allow him to grow attached and fall more deeply in love, only to break his heart later.

She groaned softly, returning to her own lab table, and flopped onto the stool there. This was all so very  _ complicated,  _ and she was not trained for this kind of complication. Sighing again, she picked up the gamma detector and stared sadly at it for a long time before finally getting back to work.

~*~

There was silence in the car for a few minutes before May's eyes slid over to him at a stoplight. "So, you and Simmons."

Bucky snorted softly. "I just met her yesterday," he pointed out.

"So?" May asked reasonably."

"So there ain't no  _ me and Simmons, _ " Bucky said firmly. "She's cute and all, but she's got three PhDs and she's way outta my league."

May laughed softly as traffic began moving again. "I don't dispute that in the least," she replied. "Jemma Simmons is so far out of your league, she might as well be in space."

Bucky's mouth twisted. "Ain't gotta rub it in."

" _ But _ ," May continued ruthlessly, "that's never stopped any woman I know from making her own decisions."

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "Nothing about how if I hurt her, you'll make sure they never find my body? What is this, some kinda pep talk?"

"Don't be ridiculous," May replied, turning sharply onto the two lane highway that would take them out to meet Coulson and Trip. "I don't give pep talks, and you already knew the part about hurting her or you wouldn't have asked for it."

"I wasn't askin' _for_ it, just _about_ it," Bucky corrected. He stared out the window at the scenery for a moment before saying, "Besides, if she's as smart as she looks, she'll stay the hell away from me."

May stopped herself from asking him to clarify; she wasn't his guidance counselor, and he'd figure it out or he wouldn't. Instead, she snorted softly. "That's the honest truth," she said simply. Neither of them said anything else until they arrived at the crab shack where Trip and Coulson were waiting for them.

"Aw, come on," Bucky complained when he found them still sitting inside Lola. "Crabs!"

"HYDRA," Coulson replied.

Bucky gestured emphatically toward the restaurant. "But, crabs!"

Coulson glared at him. "If I wanted Clint Barton along on this mission, I'd have brought him," he said flatly.

Trip reached out and clapped Bucky on his metal shoulder. "The crabs are all imported frozen anyway," he said. "Let's clean out this base and we'll go downtown and get some real seafood, one of the local places."

Bucky grumbled.

~*~

"I've never been inside that base, to my knowledge," Bucky said. "But I may be able to get through the biometrics anyway."

"How?" Coulson asked.

Bucky waggled his metal hand. "It worked on the scanner at the labs downtown; it might work here."

Coulson's eyebrow twitched in curiosity. "I was given to understand that Stark built you a whole new arm."

"He did," Bucky replied. "But I had him keep the fingers."

"Why?" Trip asked, curiously.

Bucky shrugged. "Kind of attached to 'em," he offered. He held a straight face for about five seconds, before Trip facepalmed in shame, and then he cheesed mightily. "In seriousness," he said, utterly opposite his expression of manic glee, "I kind of thought they might come in - "

" _Do not,_ " May growled.

" - useful," Bucky finished, his trollish grin morphing into an expression of patently false innocence. "Why, Agent May, what did you think I was going to say?"

May did not speak; she just glared.

"Okay," Trip said, calling the meeting to order. "How are we gonna do this?"

Coulson rubbed his chin, studying the house from across the street. "I think I have an idea."

~*~

"This is a terrible idea," Trip muttered into his earpiece.

"It's a fantastic idea," Bucky replied from his vantage point on the roof of the surf shop next door to the crab shack. He adjusted the scope on his sniper rifle. "That tie really suits you. When this is over, you should keep it."

"He cannot keep my tie," Coulson said mildly from his own position in the parking lot of the condominium next door to the little house.

"Could all of you please shut up?" May requested from her spot at Trip's left. "I'm trying to concentrate. Coulson, I'm not seeing any movement outside."

"I'm not seeing much inside," he replied. "One individual in the living room, and there appears to be nobody in the kitchen. I can't see into the bedroom."

"We'll stay alert," Trip promised. He adjusted Coulson's tie around his neck, shifted the stack of brochures in his hand, and glanced at May. "Ready?" She nodded, and they moved up the walkway, plastering friendly smiles on their faces. Trip rapped on the door.

"Movement," Coulson said. "The guy on the couch."

Bucky shifted his focus for just a moment. "No movement in the front bedroom," he reported. "No line of sight into the back." He shifted his sights back to the front door.

The door opened. A burly white man in black pants and a black tee shirt stood there, glaring down at Trip and May. "What do you want?" he demanded.

"Good afternoon, sir," Trip said, smiling broadly. He offered the man one of the brochures in his hand. "Do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?"

The man scoffed. "Get the fuck outta here," he demanded, moving to shut the door.

"Won't you take one of our brochures before we go?" Trip asked, stepping forward and shoving the leaflet at the man. He snarled back at Trip, his hand going to the back of his waistband, and Trip sidestepped. There was a tiny rushing sound, and a dart appeared in the middle of the man's chest. He looked down at it stupidly for a second before looking back up at Trip. His expression registered total confusion, then understanding - and then nothing, as the fast-acting sedative knocked him out. He toppled forward, and Trip caught him, manhandling him inside with May right at his heels.

May pushed the door shut, and Trip dropped the unconscious man in front of the sofa, then the two of them turned to clear the rest of the little house. By the time Coulson and Bucky arrived, they had assured themselves that the above-ground part of the house was totally empty, and they had located the entrance to the underground section in the kitchen. Trip pulled the stove out far enough that its front corner sat on top of the hatch; it probably wouldn't keep a determined assault team trapped, but it would make enough noise to alert them before they could be ambushed.

May, having cuffed the burly man's wrists and propped him up against the sofa, plucked the tranquilizer dart out of his chest and handed it to Bucky as he entered behind Coulson. Bucky tucked the dart away safely inside his tactical jacket. "How long before he wakes up?" he asked.

"Not long," May replied. "It's fast-acting and also fast-clearing. And it helps that he looks like the kind of guy with a high metabolism. I checked for cyanide teeth, by the way," she added. "He doesn't seem to have one."

Sure enough, within about five minutes, the man's eyelashes fluttered and he groaned softly as he came around. "The hell you shoot me with?" he slurred.

"Just a little something to help you sleep," Coulson said. He walked over to the straight-backed kitchen chair that had been placed in front of the guard and seated himself a bit primly. He fiddled with his cuffs for a moment, then straightened the tie he'd retrieved from Trip. "You were only out for a few minutes; nothing to worry about."

"Who the fuck are you?" the man snarled.

"My name is Phil Coulson," he replied. "I'm the director of SHIELD."

The guard snorted. "There is no SHIELD any more."

"Oh, you're very wrong about that," Coulson replied. "There is a SHIELD, and our primary mission is to hunt down HYDRA everywhere we can and stamp it out."

"Cut off one head - " the guard began.

"And two more grow back, yes, so I've heard," Coulson replied. "But you see, in the original story, the only thing Hercules had to do to prevent those heads from growing back was to cauterize the stumps."

There was a very long, suggestive silence. The guard swallowed.

"So," Coulson continued. "I'm going to let my colleague, Agent Barnes, ask you a few questions. You may be familiar with Agent Barnes. I strongly suggest that you answer him swiftly and truthfully." He stood, stepping aside.

The guard plastered a sneer on his face that lasted all of about five seconds - the time it took for Bucky to walk in from the kitchen, sit down in the chair, and flex his metal arm. "How you doin', Guernsey?" Bucky said softly.

"You!" Guernsey exclaimed, his face going pale and sickly.

Bucky smirked. "You don't look so happy to see me, Guernsey," he said. "I'm hurt."

"They said you were dead!"

"Yeah, they've said that before," Bucky replied, nodding. "Funny how it never seems to stick with me, ain't it?" He flexed his hand, making the little servos in the fingers whine. Then he gave Guernsey a smile that showed too many teeth. "So why don't you give me a sit-rep, Guernsey? What happened downtown, and what's going on downstairs?"

"I'm not telling you anything!" Guernsey declared.

The smile widened. Trip shivered slightly at the sight of it. "Actually," Bucky said, "you're gonna tell me everything. That ain't even in question. The question is whether or not you're gonna be screamin' when you do." He paused, studying his metal hand for a moment, and then he looked back up at Guernsey and said, "I read somewhere that it takes twenty-two pounds of instantaneous pressure to smash a human testicle, but because of the way they're made, if you apply the pressure slowly enough, they can actually withstand a half-ton or more."

Trip, who was sitting in an armchair nearby, crossed his legs. He couldn't help it. May snickered softly from her position at the kitchen door. Coulson, of course, did not react.

Guernsey, if it was possible, paled even more. "Y-you wouldn't," he blustered.

"You don't think so?" Bucky asked, his voice turning soft. "You don't think I'd do that to a выродок who stood and watched while they ran a hundred thousand volts through my head? I remember you, Guernsey. You thought it was funny when they decided to run it a second time and I pissed myself."

May and Coulson made eye contact across the room. This could go bad very quickly. May tenseed herself for quick action in case it might be needed. Trip shifted nervously in his chair.

Bucky stood up, reached into his back pocket, and pulled out a simple white handkerchief. He stepped forward and grabbed Guernsey's nose with his metal fingers, pinching down hard. Guernsey arched, and Bucky shoved the handkerchief into his mouth when it fell open. Then he released Guernsey's face, turned, and stomped down hard on the man's left knee with his heavy, steel-toed boot.

Guernsey's muffled scream was not loud enough to be heard through the hatch in the kitchen, nor was it loud enough to drown out the sound of shattering bone. The man writhed on the floor, sobbing into the makeshift gag, and Bucky watched him, his face impassive. Once the initial wave of pain seemed to have passed, Bucky reached down and pulled the handkerchief out of Guernsey's mouth. Then he returned to his chair and sat down again.

He folded his hands in his lap, and when he spoke, his voice was very soft. "I didn't enjoy that, in case you were wondering," he said. "See, unlike you, I don't think it's very funny when people get hurt. I don't like watching people endure pain, and I don't like listening to them scream. But HYDRA gave me a very specific set of skills when they started fuckin' around inside my brains, Guernsey, and I'll use every one of 'em if I got to. You see what I'm saying?"

Guernsey, sweating and trembling, managed to get himself back into a sitting position, though his left leg was twisted badly at the knee. He panted, staring at Bucky without speaking. Bucky leaned forward just a bit and pulled a large knife out of his waistband. He flipped it in his hand a few times, his eyes never leaving Guernsey's face. "Now that you understand that I'm prepared to do whatever I need to do to get you to answer me," he said, "let's start at the beginning. What happened to the labs downtown?"

"I don't know," Guernsey ground out. Bucky reached for his foot with his metal arm, and he repeated himself, frantically. "I don't know, I swear I don't!  _ We _ don't know!"

"Tell me what you do know." He pointed at Guernsey with his knife. "Everything."

The dam thus broken, Guernsey told them everything he knew. He explained that HYDRA's presence on the coast had been split of necessity; there was in fact an underwater base beneath the house, but it had been constructed in the seventies and was too small to maintain both a military and a scientific presence. Thus the downtown building had been acquired and retrofitted to fill the laboratory needs of the scientists. 

"What were they doing in that lab?" Bucky asked.

"They, uh..." Guernsey swallowed hard, his expression growing hunted. "I don't know all the details."

"You know enough," Bucky replied. "Enough to know I ain't gonna like whatever it was." He flipped the knife in his hand. "You know the choices, Guernsey. Spill your guts or I take 'em out."

Guernsey dithered for a minute until Bucky reached down and yanked on his left foot. The injured man bit back a howl of pain and panted out, "It's those freaks! Those freaks did it!"

"What freaks?" 

"The ones Bentley and Palchek found in Kamchatka."

"Yeah, you're gonna need to give me more than that," Bucky said. "What freaks?"

Guernsey explained that his fellow agents Bentley and Palchek had been sent to Kamchatka on a mission, but he did not know the details of it. He did know, however, that when they returned, they brought with them a set of twin girls, around fourteen years old, from Esso. They claimed the girls had some kind of mutant ability, and HYDRA was always very interested in anyone who carried the X-gene. "So they started working on them."

"Working how?" Coulson asked. It was the first time he'd spoken since Bucky took over the interrogation.

Guernsey shrugged. "I don't know, man, I don't do science." What he did do, he explained, was provide security. The girls were held in the Orange Beach base, and once every couple of weeks or so, they were transported into town for the scientists to do whatever it was that they did. "It was safe, you know, because their powers don't work unless they're touching each other. So as long as you keep them separated, you can do whatever you want."

Bucky grunted. "Pretty sure I'm gonna be cutting your balls off for that later," he said mildly. "But go on. What happened? Somebody let 'em get too close to each other?"

It appeared, according to Guernsey, that Bucky was exactly right. Not having been present for the event, his best guess was that someone had failed to secure one of the girls, and she had managed to get a hand on her sister. "And once that happened, well, their freak factor lets them vaporize stuff."

"Oh," Trip said. "I can see why HYDRA would be interested in that."

"Sure," Bucky agreed. "That'd be damn useful if you could manage to wipe 'em the same way you wiped me. Am I right?"

Guernsey shrugged. "What do you want me to do, apologize? Fuck you. You think I care what you think? You're nothing. You're weak. You're damn right I laughed. The big bad Winter Soldier, sitting in a puddle of his own piss, squealing like a pig."

Bucky's expression never changed; he simply reached down and grabbed Guernsey's left foot, snatching on it hard. Guernsey squalled in pain, and Bucky sat back, waiting for him to finish. "I can make you squeal like a pig, too, Guernsey," he said mildly. "Let's get back on topic. The girls can vaporize stuff. What kind of stuff?"

It turned out that what the girls could do was vaporize organic material. His best guess about the downtown lab was that once they had contact with one another, they simply vaporized everyone in the room with them. Then they freed themselves from their restraints and made their way through the lab, killing everyone they encountered. Once they cleared the inside, they started up the stairs to the helipad where they'd been brought in. Guernsey and two other agents, Barrilla and Stone, had been standing up there smoking and shooting the breeze when the door flew open. The girls had gotten Barrilla, but Guernsey had been quick enough to shoot one of them with his stun gun; when she fell, the two of them lost physical contact for long enough that Stone was able to get his hands on the conscious one and drag her away. The girls thus recaptured (and carefully restrained), they had gone downstairs and discovered that everyone inside had been killed. "So we called back to base and Commander Weldon said bring them back. So we brought them back."

"And where are they now?" Coulson inquired.

"Downstairs," Guernsey replied. "Commander Weldon administered disciplinary measures, and then locked them back in their cells until we can get new scientists in."

"Disciplinary measures?" Trip asked. His tone was dangerous.

Guernsey shrugged, trying to look nonchalant, but he flicked a nervous glance at Bucky and declined to be more specific. Bucky let it go for the moment in favor of more important information: specifically, the layout of the downstairs and the number and nature of the individuals who were there. "And let me explain this clearly," he said before Guernsey had a chance to say anything. "I'm gonna leave you up here alive. If you lie to me, even a little bit, about who's down there and what I can expect, I'm gonna come back up here and I'm gonna peel all your fucking skin off. Do you understand?"

Guernsey swallowed, nodded, and began to describe the layout. 

Once they had all the information they wanted from him, Trip helped Bucky to secure Guernsey in the house's second bedroom, with the drapes closed. Once Bucky was certain that he couldn't escape, they left him there, stepping out and closing the door on him. Then they went into the kitchen. Bucky pushed the stove back off the hatch, then he and May took positions on either side of it, weapons at the ready. Trip stood to the side as backup, and Coulson lifted the hatch from behind.

There was no one in sight down the narrow staircase that wound downwards. They all held still for a moment, but no sound carried up either. Bucky glanced at Coulson, cocking an eyebrow, and Coulson nodded. His weapon at the ready, Bucky started down the steps, with May just behind him and Trip following her. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, I'm so close to the end of this summer term, you guys. SO CLOSE. UGH. Remind me not to EVER do this again.

The staircase wound down about a floor and a half, and it ended in a tiny space with a single steel door. According to Guernsey, the door opened into a short hallway that functioned as a funnel, just wide enough for one man to walk down, about ten feet in length. Long enough, in other words, for the five soldiers at the end of the hallway to cut an intruder down.

Fortunately, Bucky and his team knew what was coming. He and May just barely fit together at the foot of the stairs, with Trip above them and Coulson above him. Bucky glanced at her. "You want up or down?"

"Down," she replied.

He nodded. "Ready?"

She nodded back. "Ready."

He reached out and pressed his metal hand to the biometric plate by the door. With a loud buzz, it slid back into the wall. May darted forward into the hallway. As the first of the soldiers came into view, she went down, propelling herself forward on her stomach like a child on a Slip 'n' Slide, her gun out and her elbows braced against the floor. She took the first one out with a gut shot, and behind her, Bucky came forward, his own gun ready in his metal hand. He took out the second soldier with a shot to the head.

In the room at the end of the hallway, the remaining soldiers shouted back and forth as they tried to prepare for the invasion; Bucky smirked to himself at the thought. Nothing they did was going to save them.

May did an Army crawl toward the end of the hallway; Bucky followed her, stepping carefully, keeping his feet on either side of her hips. "Surrender and you live," he called out.

The only response from the unseen soldiers was a rattling burst of gunfire. He looked down at May. "See anything?" he murmured.

She leaned carefully first to the right, shaking her head, and then to the left. There she nodded. She held up a finger. Then she pointed right, and held up two fingers. One target, two o'clock. Bucky nodded. Then he raised his right hand, palm flat, and held it up near his head. She shook her head, holding her own hand down low, and then gestured at her shoulders. The target was low, had taken cover behind something that hid him from the shoulders down. A smart move; he'd made himself a very difficult target to hit.

Bucky took a deep breath, calming his heart and slowing his breathing. This was what he had been trained for, the purpose for which HYDRA had forged him. He put his back against the left hand wall of the hallway and slid forward a half step, then another, edging just to the point where he could see the edge of the target's head. He raised his left arm, getting a bead on where the target's head would be once he moved again. And then, between one heartbeat and the next, he took that last half-step and fired.

The target went down. "Two left," Bucky said, stepping back into the minimal cover of the hallway.

"Do you want to run in, guns blazing?" May asked.

Bucky snorted. "They've got potential hostages," he pointed out.

May smirked. "Just checking." She edged forward just a bit more, leaning in both directions to try and see where their targets were.

Bucky considered the part of the room that was visible in front of him. There was a single old-style metal desk, probably there since the place was built, that he could use for cover, if he could get behind it. He glanced down at May, who shook her head once, indicating that she could not see the targets. He pointed at his own chest, then at the desk. She nodded once, scooting herself back to get out of his way.

He holstered his weapons, took a single deep breath, and darted across the floor. There was a moment of hesitation - the HYDRA soldiers had clearly not been expecting that - and it was just enough to get him behind the desk before they started shooting at him. Once he was down, he gave the top of the desk a quick shove from the front underside, flipping it over so that it provided better cover. Then he pulled the Glock out of his shoulder holster.

He shifted up into a crouch and, very carefully, shifted to the left. Raising his head above the top of the desk would be a good way to get it blown off, after all. He leaned very carefully, just enough to get a quick look at the room, and then ducked back again before either of the soldiers could get a bead on him. He considered what he'd just seen.

They were both crouched in front of two cells that appeared to have been built out of some kind of transparent plastic type of material. That must be where they were holding the girls, though he hadn't seen them in his quick look. He thought about this for a second, and then he shouted in Russian,  _ <You girls, do you hear me? Can you understand me?> _

There was a long silence before two voices spoke in unison. " _ Da. _ "

He took a deep breath. If this went wrong, he was going to end up dead on his first trip out with the team, and Steve would be seriously pissed at him.  _ <Your enemies are my enemies. I wish to free you. Will you allow this?> _

The answer this time came immediately " _ Da. _ "

_< Will you promise not to kill me and my friends?>_

" _ Da. _ "

_< Get to the far back and cover your heads; I'm going to blow you out.>_

And then he counted in English. "Three! Two! One! Mark!"

Without lifting his head, he raised his metal arm over the top of the desk and fired off one of the tiny rockets Tony had stuck into it; it packed just enough firepower that it should blow the plastic walls of the cells wide open without hurting the girls. The explosion was terrific, and Bucky came to his feet immediately in the aftermath, shouting in Russian again.  _ <Are you all right?> _

He dropped back down at a sudden burst of gunfire, and then tentatively raised his head again at the sound of a weird noise like the rush of wind between two mountain peaks - or down the gully between the skyscrapers in Manhattan. The two girls, barefoot and dressed in rough smocks, were standing side by side in the hole he'd made, hand in hand. The last two HYDRA soldiers were nowhere to be seen, and Bucky had a feeling he knew what had happened to them.

He studied the girls; they were short, round-faced, with the black hair, brown skin, and dark almond-shaped eyes of polar indigenous peoples; since they had come from Kamchatka, he assumed they were likely Koriak. They had clearly been mistreated; both of them were obviously thinner than they should be, and one of them had a black eye.

They studied him in return, their eyes glistening at him. He wondered what they saw. He holstered his gun and held out his hands to them.  _ <I will not hurt you,> _ he said in Russian.  _ <Nor will my friends. We want to help you. We will take you home if you wish.> _

The girls looked at each other for a long moment before looking back at him.  _ <We have no home,> _ the one with the black eye said.  _ <The soldiers killed our family when they took us away.> _

He'd been afraid of that.  _ <I'm sorry,> _ he said.  _ <Will you come with us? We can give you food and better clothing, and help you decide what you want to do next.> _

The girls looked at each other again, then back at him. Slowly, they released each other's hands. The one without the black eye nodded. " _ Da, _ " she said.  _ <We will come.> _

~*~

The first stop upon arriving back at the bus was the tiny medical bay beside the lab. Jemma was waiting for them when they got there, but the girls shrank back from the med bay door, clasping each other's hands, obviously afraid of what might happen inside.

So Bucky, with a gentle touch to the shoulder of the one with the black eye, walked into the room instead. He boosted himself up onto the table and gave Jemma a grin.  _ <I will show you,> _ he told them.  _ <Jemma is a very good doctor; she will not hurt you.> _ To Jemma, he said, "They just came outta a HYDRA lab. You gotta show 'em what you wanna do, so they know you ain't gonna hurt 'em."

"Oh, of course," Jemma said softly. "Will you translate? I'm afraid Russian is one of those languages I keep swearing to get round to one of these days."

Bucky nodded. "Sure."

She checked his temperature, his blood pressure, and his respiration sounds, narrating everything she was doing and letting the girls see each instrument before she applied it, with him translating along behind her. She tended to some minor scrapes he'd acquired in the course of invading the base, cleaning them carefully with an antiseptic that made him hiss in surprise at the burn he hadn't been expecting. "Ow!" he exclaimed, surprised into speech. "Is that straight alcohol? Jesus! Don't you have any mercurochrome?"

She gave him a flat, unimpressed look. "It's an alcohol solution, and mercurochrome has been banned since the late 1990s. It turns out that, since mercury is highly poisonous, it's a really terrible idea to apply a solution of mercury directly to an open wound."

Bucky grumbled, scowling. "At least it didn't burn like that."

Jemma reached into a cabinet and pulled out several Band-Aids. He tried to protest that he didn't need them - the scrapes would heal up on their own quickly enough - but within moments, he was plastered with the faces of Disney princesses. He scowled even harder at the little biochemist, who gave him a serene smile in response. Then she turned her head and quirked an eyebrow at the girls in the hallway, who giggled in reply.

Deciding that it was worth the sting and the slight embarrassment, Bucky straightened up and owned the princess bandages, checking them over carefully. "Okay, I know Sleeping Beauty," he said, pointing at two different bandages. "And I recognize Cinderella and the Little Mermaid, because Darcy made me watch them both. But which one is this one?"

"That's Jasmine," Jemma said. "From  _ Aladdin. _ She didn't make you watch that one?"

He shook his head. "We were workin' our way through 'em. Didn't get there yet, I guess."

"Well, if you like," Jemma said, wondering even as she spoke who had taken over her mouth, "I'd be happy to watch it with you later."

Bucky cocked his head and studied her. "Yeah," he said softly. "I'd like that." And then he smiled at her.

She smiled back. Then she gave his metal shoulder a shove. "Now move; I'd like to actually examine my  _ patients _ ."

He grinned, moving off the exam table, and turned to the girls.  _ <Will you let the doctor check you over now?> _ he asked.  _ <She's very nice, and she just wants to make sure you aren't hurt.> _

They giggled again, and released each other's hands. The girl with the black eye, who had given her name as Liuba, entered the room first, and Bucky swung her up onto the table before shifting out of the way so that Jemma could work. She applied cream to the bruising around the girl's eye, checked her vitals, and then said, "Now, Liuba, tell me honestly. Have you got bruising or hurts in anyplace that I can't see?"

Bucky translated the question, and the girl's face went bright red, her eyes looking everywhere in the room except at Bucky. He nodded once, his expression grim. "I'm gonna step out," he said. Then, to Liuba, he added,  _ <Show Dr. Simmons where you are hurt. She will help you. If you need me, call. All right?> _

" _ Da, _ " Liuba replied.

Bucky stepped out of the room, moved to the side of the door, and sat down with his back to the wall, his eyes on the other girl, who was called Klara. He watched Klara while Klara watched Liuba through the doorway, and caught the wince and the expression of extreme consternation on Klara's face even as the rustling indicated that Liuba had removed her smock. He heard Jemma mutter "Oh, my," and he forced himself to take a deep, calming breath. Guernsey was still in custody; he could make himself feel better with a little "interrogation" later.

Then he sighed, his head dropping back against the wall. No, no he  _ couldn't _ , and he damn well knew it. What he  _ didn't _ know was if the instinctive urge was something left over from HYDRA's conditioning or was a part of his own violent nature. 

This was part of why he'd wanted to get away from New York for awhile: there were parts of him that he was still very uncomfortable with, and as much as he loved Steve and liked the rest of the team, this was something he had to do for himself and preferably by himself. Steve had been and would always be, as Darcy had once put it, his brother from another mother, but Steve had trouble understanding the dissonance inside Bucky's head and was inclined to excuse Bucky's lapses.

Bucky knew that there were certain basic differences between the man he was - indeed, the man he used to be before the war - and the man Steve remembered. The Bucky in Steve's memory was half on a pedestal; he'd been strong and brave and protective and caring and kind and all those other wonderful things that told Bucky that Stevie'd been looking at him through rose-colored glasses. Bucky remembered himself; strong and protective and caring he might have been, but even as a young man there had been a capacity for violence inside of him that sometimes scared him. He freely admitted - within the safety of his own head - that it was at least part of the reason why he'd started hanging around Steve as a kid. When you had an itch inside of you that wanted trouble, it helped to hang around with somebody that attracted trouble like a streetlight attracted moths.

He was startled out of his introspection by Jemma's voice. "Bucky," she was calling out, "she needs stitches."

"Okay," he called back. "Want me in there, or out here?"

"Out there, please; just ask her to lie back and explain that I'm going to give her a shot to numb the area and then I'm going to stitch it up. Tell her she'll feel a bit of a pinch from the needle, and it might burn a little bit, but then it won't hurt at all, and she shouldn't feel anything while I'm stitching."

Bucky passed on the information and asked if Liuba had any questions before beginning. There was a long moment of silence before she said,  _ <Do you promise it will not hurt?> _

_ <If it hurts,> _ he said,  _ <you say so and she will make it stop hurting. I have had stitches before, and if it is done properly, you should not feel anything. All right?> _

There was another long moment before Liuba released a tiny, wavering " _ Da. _ "

Bucky closed his eyes and laid his head back against the wall again, and this time he didn't wonder whether it was him or the Asset that wanted to go down to the holding cell and skin Guernsey alive.

~*~

Once the girls' checkups were done - fortunately, Klara needed no stitches - and they were clothed decently in jeans and t-shirts and had full plates of food in front of them, Bucky sat down with them to learn their story and find out what could be done. Liuba and Klara had been born in a village called Tymlat, but their parents had gone to Esso seeking work. Before HYDRA came, there had been a younger brother, Pyotr, and a baby sister, Daria. The family inhabited a tiny, one-room flat in the poorest area of the city. Then the soldiers came in the night.

The soldiers, Klara explained around a mouthful of egg, came without warning; the family had just settled down to sleep when the door burst open. The first shot had killed their father; the second killed Pyotr. The third killed their mother, and then the soldiers had dragged Klara and Liuba away.  _ <I think maybe Daria is still alive,> _ she said in Russian.  _ <The mother next door liked us very much; she might have taken her.> _

Upon further questioning, Liuba confessed that she knew why the soldiers took them; the girls had been playing in the rooftop garden after school, using their powers to vaporize the weeds that would otherwise choke the fruits and vegetables that grew there.  _ <I think they saw us,> _ she confessed to Bucky.  _ <But I don't understand why they didn't just take us then. Why did they have to kill Mama and Papa and Pyotr?> _

That was not a question Bucky was capable of answering. Instead, he said to them,  _ <You have a choice now. You are not our prisoners; we will not force you to do anything you don't want to do. We can take you back to Esso, if you want to go there, or to Tymlat, if you have grandparents or aunts and uncles there who would care for you. But there is another choice as well. There is a school for children who have abilities like yours; you could go there, if you want to.> _

The girls studied each other for a long moment; Bucky got the feeling that they had more than one ability hiding in there, but he wasn't going to ask. Finally, they turned their attention back to him.  _ <We will go to this school,> _ Klara said.  _ <But... do you think there is any way that you could find out about Daria?> _

Bucky stood up.  _ <I promise you,> _ he said,  _ <I will find out what I can, and I will bring or send you word when I know something.> _

Liuba nodded.  _ <Thank you.> _

He left them in the galley area and joined Coulson, Trip, and Skye in Coulson's office, where he relayed what the girls had told him. "They'll go to Xavier's school," he advised Coulson as he dropped down onto the sofa. "But they want me to find out about their sister, if I can. Apparently the soldiers left her behind. She's about four."

Skye shuddered. "That's horrible."

"That's HYDRA," Bucky replied. "They never did give a fuck who they hurt."

Trip shook his head. "My granddad never would talk about what happened at that factory in Austria," he said softly.

"Yeah, there's a reason for that," Bucky replied, stretching his legs out in front of him. "Most of us did all right if we kept our heads down. But Gabe and Morita, man, it wasn't like they was pure blood Aryan stock, you know? They kinda stood out."

"Yeah, I feel you," Trip replied.

"Hell, even Dum Dum gave Morita a hard time at first," Bucky admitted. "I wasn't there, but Monty told me later, when Steve let them out, Dum Dum made some kinda crack about were we takin' everybody, and Morita had to show him his damn dog tags to prove he was from Fresno."

Skye shook her head. "Man, that's a side of things we didn't see in the history books."

"Yeah, it damn sure wasn't all sunshine and rainbows right from the start." Bucky shook his head. "Times were different then. Hell, I ain't innocent. I'll be the first one to admit I thought Steve was crazy for puttin' a colored man and a Jap on the team. But he knew what he was doin', even then. We got better as we went along, you know? It only takes a little time to realize folks is just folks, and Gabe and Morita weren't no different from me or Steve." He eyeballed Trip. "And I ain't afraid to say I was wrong."

Trip grinned. "You're all right, man," he said.

Coulson folded his hands on the desktop. "We'll take the girls to Westchester, then," he said. "I'll send Xavier an email to let him know that he should expect us. Skye, you'll get them settled in a room?"

Skye nodded. "Together's probably best, yeah?" she asked, glancing between Coulson and Bucky.

"Probably," Bucky said, nodding slowly. "Makes 'em feel safer."

She stood and left the room, and Bucky ran a hand through his hair. "Dunno how the hell I'm gonna get to Esso," he muttered to himself.

"Not to worry," Coulson replied. "We'll be heading there after we drop the girls off." He smirked at Bucky's surprised expression. "We want to know what HYDRA was doing there, don't we?"

"Oh, yeah," Bucky replied. "Good point."

"Don't suppose you have anything about one of their bases locked up in that brain of yours," Trip said casually.

Bucky cocked his head, his eyes going distant as he rifled through his store of memories. "Nope," he finally said, shaking his head. "Closest I can get - geographically, I mean - is Birobidzhan, and that's only because the Chinese border is porous there."

Trip opened his own laptop, pulling up information on the Internet. "I can't figure out what the hell they'd be doing out there anyway," he said. "There ain't nothing there. Literally, Esso's a dot on the map. There's  _ one _ damn city on the whole peninsula."

"That's one reason why they're there," Bucky replied.

Trip raised an eyebrow, but it was Coulson who elaborated. "If the area's largely uninhabited," he explained, "they can get away with more. No police, no army, no oversight."

"So they could have gigantic fucking bases out there and we wouldn't know it," Trip said.

Bucky shrugged. "Essentially," he admitted. "Of course, with all this fancy new satellite tech, I'm thinkin' that's gettin' harder to pull off, but there's ways to fool most any camera. Hell, we did it in the war with netting and stuff. You could get a bunch of artists together and give 'em some netting and fake bushes, and they could hide a whole base from aerial reconnaissance."

"They'll need more than netting and fake bushes to hide from us," Coulson assured him. "In the meantime, let's all get some rest. We've earned it. I'll send a message to Xavier letting him know that we'll bring the girls tomorrow."

Bucky nodded, standing. "Well," he said, "as first days on the job go, this was definitely one of the better ones I've had." Coulson laughed, and Bucky stepped out, pulling the office door shut behind himself.

He made his way through the quiet plane to his own little cupboard, and he was in the middle of a very hot shower when he heard a tap on his door. He stuck his head out of the shower compartment. "Yeah?"

The door of his cupboard opened. "It's Jemma," Jemma's voice called out. "I wanted to see if you'd like to watch that movie."

"Oh, sure," Bucky replied. "Gimme ten?"

"Of course," she replied. "I'll be outside."

When Bucky pulled the door open eight minutes later, he was barefoot and dressed in blue track pants and a gray t-shirt Darcy had given him that bore a logo supporting the Sunnydale High Razorbacks. He wasn't sure what the joke was, but every time he wore it, Clint and Tony both snickered a lot, so he kept wearing it, because it was nicer to make people laugh than cry. Jemma, who was curled up in a chair with her laptop, looked up at him and smiled. "I didn't know you were a  _ Buffy _ fan."

He quirked an eyebrow. "What's Buffy?"

Her jaw dropped. "Someone gave you that shirt, didn't they?" When he nodded, she grinned widely. "Well, perhaps I'll have to introduce you sometime. Sunnydale High School is from a television show called  _ Buffy the Vampire Slayer. _ "

He considered that. "It sounds ridiculous," he finally said.

"It  _ was _ ridiculous," she replied. "But it was also groundbreaking and culturally significant and lots of fun." She grinned.

He shook his head, unable to stop himself from grinning back. "Man, I'll tell you," he said as he padded over toward the galley, pulling out the box of microwave popcorn. "If only those HYDRA bastards could see me now. Stealin' mutant kids outta their bases and havin' Disney movie nights with pretty dames." He tipped her a wink as he tossed a bag of popcorn into the microwave.

She laughed. "There would definitely be gnashing of teeth," she agreed.

"Hell, yes, there would." He grinned widely. "You know, they say revenge is a dish best served cold, but Pepper Potts says living well is the best revenge."

" Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge," Jemma quoted, "With Ate by his side come hot from hell, / Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice / Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war."

Bucky nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, Shakespeare knew what he was talkin' about, that's for sure." Then he smirked at her expression of surprise. "What, you thought I wouldn't know it? I know Shakespeare. I almost went to college."

"Only almost?" she asked.

He shrugged as the microwave beeped. "Yeah, we talked about it, but my folks were worried because they were starting to let girls in, and there was dancin' and such goin' on at the schools, and they were afraid I might not apply myself to my studies at with as much vigor as I might apply myself to Kathleen O'Malley. That's almost a direct quote, by the way - my Pa was a bit concerned about whether or not I was gonna make him a grandpa before I made him a father-in-law, if you get my drift." He grinned again. "So he got me a job at an advertising firm in Manhattan with a friend of his instead. And then I got drafted in '42."

"I see," she said. "Well I can only imagine how horrified your parents would be at some of the goings-on that happen on modern college campuses."

He laughed. "They'd have locked me in a closet," he assured her. He dumped the popcorn into a bowl, tossed the bag into the trash, and said, "So, your broom cupboard or mine?"

She grinned. "Yours," she said, unfolding herself from the chair and following him into his tiny living space.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY THOR YOU GUYS. I am _so sorry_ for making you wait so long for this. There just is no excuse and I am a terrible person. I hope some of you are still with me!

They settled in on Bucky's bunk, her feet up on the fold-down desk and his on the wall, Jemma's laptop balanced on their legs and the bowl of popcorn between them. Jemma put the movie on, and felt a slight shiver of nerves run through her body as she did so. _Stop it, goose,_ she said firmly to herself. _Just because it's your favorite and you want him to like it as much as you do, that's no reason to go getting all nervy. This isn't a date, you know._

She took a deep breath to try and calm herself down, just as the Merchant began peddling his wares, and caught a lungful of the spicy body wash that Bucky used. _Oh_ , she thought, closing her eyes briefly. _Never mind. You're screwed._

Fighting not to roll her eyes at herself, she forced them back open and focused on the movie. She managed to keep herself from staring at him too much, though she couldn't help the way her eyes flicked over at him when they reached some of her favorite parts, checking for his reaction to see if he would love it as well as she did. She wasn't sure at first; he quirked the occasional eyebrow, and snorted at the brothel bit during Aladdin's flight from the soldiers, but otherwise didn't react much - until the scene that introduced the Sultan and Jasmine. Then, quite suddenly, he gave a rusty chuckle. "I like the tiger," he said.

"Me, too," Jemma replied, grinning. "Raja is one of my favorite Disney animals."

"Yeah?" He glanced in her direction, a funny half-smile on his face. "Not the dalmatians?"

She shook her head. "I read the book as a child, several times, before I ever saw the movie, and the movie got so many things so wrong that I couldn't even watch it all the way through. They _wrote out Pongo's wife_ , for the love of all that's good and holy!"

Bucky's brow furrowed. "But he had a wife. I saw that movie, and I distinctly remember - "

"Oh, he had one, certainly," Jemma huffed. "But it was the wrong one. His wife in the book was called Missus. Perdita was a foundling; that's how she got her name. It's Spanish for 'little lost girl.'"

"Huh," Bucky said. "I did not know that." His attention flicked back to the screen just in time to watch Jafar divine Aladdin's identity as the only person able to enter the Cave of Wonders. "I'm thinkin' that ain't gonna end well for Jafar."

"Likely not," Jemma replied, grinning.

They were quiet for a few minutes, except for the sound of popcorn being munched. When Jafar convinced Jasmine that he'd already had Aladdin killed, Bucky snorted again. "Believe that when I see the body," he muttered. When Aladdin and Abu entered the cave, he said, "That monkey's gonna be trouble." He laughed at the magic carpet's first appearance, saying, "Ain't it crazy how they can make a damn carpet look like it's got feelings and stuff? Look at that thing. You can _see_ how curious it is. And it hasn't even got a face!"

Jemma grinned. "Just wait," she said.

And then Jafar-in-disguise tossed Aladdin backward into the collapsing Cave, and Abu with him, and Bucky stiffened, and Jemma mentally kicked herself for forgetting about this part. Fortunately the fall was short, and landed softly on a magic carpet, but it took a full forty-five seconds before Bucky managed to take a deep breath and force himself to relax. She bit her lip. "I'm sorry," she said softly.

Bucky shook his head, his eyes on Jafar as he removed his disguise and discovered that the magic lamp was no longer in his pocket. "Just caught me by surprise," he said. "It's okay." He paused, and then added, "Besides, this is nothing compared to watching Thor blubber over Scar killing Mufasa."

Jemma gave him a soft, thready laugh. "I'm starting to think that none of you should be watching Disney films."

"Probably not," he agreed. And then, as the Sultan put his arm around Jasmine, he reached out and draped his arm around her shoulders. "Maybe you better come closer," he said. "In case I need comforting after my trauma."

She blinked, then glared up at him. "Did that sort of line actually work on girls back in the thirties? Because I have some very, _very_ bad news for you."

He laughed then, really laughed, and his eyes twinkled down at her. "Sometimes," he admitted. "It depended on the girl and whether or not she wanted it to work."

Jemma made a soft sound of annoyance. "Honestly," she scolded him gently. "If that's the best you can do, you've been oversold."

"Guess I'll just have to do better," he said. "Now hush, I think he's about to rub the lamp."

A bit later, he snorted again. "That Sultan ain't the brightest bulb in the lamp, is he?"

"Unfortunately not," Jemma agreed.

"If it wasn't for the daughter I'd say he kinda deserves what's comin' to him." Bucky shook his head. Just about that moment, the Sultan declared himself an excellent judge of character. Bucky's jaw dropped, and an utterly inelegant bray of laughter escaped his mouth. Jemma had to pause the movie and hold the laptop while Bucky laughed far harder than the single line could have accounted for, and when he was done, he rested his forehead on her shoulder. "Shit," he mumbled. "I was _not_ expecting that."

Jemma chuckled. "Apparently not," she agreed. "Was it really that funny?"

"Not really," he admitted. "I had a - well, not exactly a flashback, you know, because those are bad. But I just... I just remembered the first time Steve ever met my folks."

Jemma raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Yeah." He resettled himself on the mattress, his shoulder now brushing against hers. "We met at school. My folks were Presbyterians, but the Catholic school was doin' some kind of new thing, Montessori, I think they called it. And it was fancy and new, which meant my Ma could show it off to her bridge club or the Aid Society. And they could seem progressive for not being anti-Catholic." He put on a fake falsetto. "Oh, your daughter's still at the public school, is she? We decided to send our James to Saint Mary's. They're doing _Montessori_ now, you know. Oh, yes, it _is_ Catholic, but the Protestant children are excused from religious studies, and the nuns are _very_ disciplined."

Jemma snorted a laugh. "Was she that bad?"

" _Worse_ ," Bucky said. "Because I'd hear her start on about the school, you know, and I'd think, _aw, Christ, here we go again._ And I'd try to sneak out, but I'd have to cross the hall into my sisters' room to get to the fire escape, and if she saw me or heard me, or I didn't get out in time, I was sunk. And then it'd be 'James, come and tell the ladies what you learned in school this week.' And I'd spend the next half hour reciting verses and doing times tables and talkin' about European geography and the native animals of Darkest Africa when I coulda been out on the street winning marbles off the Frasier boys." He rolled his eyes.

"Not that I'm not fascinated - because I really am, and I could listen to you tell stories about your boyhood all day - but I'm curious how this ties into the Sultan...?"

"Oh, right." He grinned. "So that's how I met Stevie. He and his Ma were members at Saint Mary's parish, and Steve was having troubles at the public school - kids pickin' on him, you know, and a couple boys that thought it was funny to bounce a kid off walls because he couldn't fight back - so his Ma talked to the Monsignor and the Monsignor agreed to put him in the school there, even though his Ma couldn't afford to pay tuition. So he showed up one day about mid-way through October, and I guess they did placement testing on him or something - or maybe it was an accident, I don't know - because they put him in with us third graders even though he'd been in second grade at the public school. And we had those double desks, you know the ones, where two kids sit together? You've probably seen pictures."

She nodded. "I have."

"Yeah, they don't use 'em any more, I guess. Well, Sister Mary Francis, who was our teacher, stopped me on the way in that morning, I remember she was right by the Monsignor's office and Stevie was sittin' in the chair beside her." He paused. "That kid had the knobbiest knees I think I've ever seen." He grinned. "Anyway, she pulls me off to the side and she introduces Steve, tells me he's new, and he's gonna be sittin' with me, and would I please watch out for him - which in those days was pretty much code for 'all of your friends are going to have the burning desire to kill this child for no good reason; could you please prevent that.' So I said sure, and I grabbed his hand, and off we went to the classroom." He paused again. "Now that I think about it, it might have just been dumb luck that she picked me to watch out for him; I was the only boy who didn't have a desk partner."

"The beat of a butterfly's wings," Jemma murmured.

"Huh?"

"Oh," she said. "It's... it's a concept, in chaos theory. It's called the Butterfly Effect. The idea is sensitive dependency on initial conditions; that is, a very small change in a deterministic nonlinear system can result in major differences in a later state. It - " She paused, taking in the blank expression on his face, and backed up. "It means that tiny changes in one place can have massive effects later on. For example, the man who coined the term theorized that the beat of a butterfly's wings in one place could so affect the weather as to cause - or prevent - a hurricane across the globe weeks later." She smiled. "In this case, the butterfly is your teacher's seating arrangement. Had someone else been the only boy with lacking a desk partner..."

"I might not be here right now," Bucky replied, nodding as he understood. "Yeah, it's possible. I don't know. Stevie, man, he was a hard kid to miss. Mostly on account of he was usually dripping blood on the floor." He shook his head, grinning. "Which was maybe one of the first things my folks noticed about him. I dragged him home after school with me the next day, and we got in a fight with Dizzy Murphy on the way. Steve and Dizzy didn't get along too good; Dizzy was a bully and you know how Steve is about bullies. Hell, the whole damn world knows how Steve is about bullies. So by the time we got home, he had a shiner and a bloody nose and I had both my knees scraped up, a jammed wrist, and a hole in my new school pants. My Ma was some kind of mad about that, let me tell you."

"I imagine so," Jemma replied, her lips twitching.

"Well, he stayed for supper, but after he left, my Pa sat me down real serious and said how he thought maybe Steve wasn't the kind of boy I ought to get too involved with. After all, I'd only known the kid two days and he'd already nearly got the shit kicked outta both of us. Plus, you know, he was poor, and you could tell it by lookin' at him. He and his Ma, you know, they were very much Not Our Kinda Folks." Bucky shook his head. "And I said to my Pa that Steve was actually an extremely good person and a gentleman, and how he held doors open for the girls and helped the sisters as much as he could. And I said to him - I hope to God I never forget this again - I said, 'You don't have to worry about me, Papa, I'm a very good judge of character.' And my Pa, God rest his soul, absolutely did not laugh at me."

Jemma's laughter pealed out in the tiny space. "Oh, your poor parents."

"Yeah, we made 'em nuts, the two of us did. About drove Steve's Ma to distraction once or twice." Bucky sighed, leaning back against the wall and tugging Jemma back in to lean against him.

She looked up at him. "It must be terribly hard," she said softly. "I can't imagine. I've never lost anyone close to me, not like that. Both my parents and my brothers are still alive, and I..." She shook her head. "I don't quite know what to say, I'm afraid."

Bucky shook his head. "Nothing to say, not really," he admitted. His jaw clenched for a moment, and then he sighed softly. "Here, let's put the movie back on," he said. "Hopefully I ain't ruined the mood completely."

"Not at all," she assured him, reaching for the laptop and balancing it once again.

They passed the rest of the movie in relative silence aside from quiet chuckles and soft comments on the story itself. When it was over, Bucky gave Jemma a genuine smile. "That was a good one, Jem," he said. "Thanks for showin' it to me."

"You're quite welcome," she assured him. "Perhaps another, one night soon?"

"Anytime you're up for it, let me know. Not like I'm going anywhere much." He shifted her laptop to the desk, but made no real effort to get up or move, and so neither did she. Instead, she let him take her hand, and she watched him as he examined her nail polish and toyed with her fingers. "So, which one's your favorite?"

"Of the Disney movies?" she asked. "That's a tough choice." She considered. "Of the princesses, I think perhaps _Beauty and the Beast_ and _Mulan_ ; their heroines are less... self-centered than the others. Ariel, for example; her entire motivation was teenage rebellion and an insistence that she was in love with some boy she'd only seen from a distance and never actually spoken to. Mulan, though, wanted to protect her father from being conscripted into a war he was too old to fight, and Belle wanted to rescue _her_ father from imprisonment within the Beast's castle." She paused, and smiled at him. "We should watch _Mulan_ next. You'll enjoy it. And for the rest of your life, any time anyone says something about getting down to business, you'll follow it up with 'to defeat the Hun'. Sometimes out loud, against your will."

He laughed. "I'm game," he assured her. "So what about the other ones? The non-Princess ones? I remember when Steve and I saw _Fantasia_ in the theater. We rode the trolley out to Brighton Beach and saw it."

"Oh, that's even more difficult. So many of them have been so good, especially the more recent Pixar films. _WALL-E_ , for example, is simply adorable, and _Finding Nemo_ as well." She chewed on her lip for a moment, thinking. "All in all, though, I think I'd have to go with _Lilo & Stitch_. It's about two orphaned sisters, the elder trying desperately to take care of the younger and keep their lives together, and they accidentally adopt a vicious, destructive alien. They think it's a dog."

Bucky was silent for a moment. "That sounds like a recipe for complete chaos."

"Oh, you've no idea." Jemma grinned. "I think you'll enjoy it quite a bit."

Bucky smiled. "I'm sure I will."

They were silent for a moment before Jemma said, quite out of nowhere, "Don't ever watch _The Fox and the Hound._ "

He blinked at her. "O...kay?"

She shook her head. "Don't ask. Just... as a favor to me. Never, ever watch it." She paused. "There are probably others you shouldn't watch, as well. I'll check."

He tilted his head, studying her face. "Okay," he said again, drawing the word out just enough that she knew he was worrying about her sanity.

"It's just... The subject matter is emotionally distressing, and there are certain... elements of it that might be... especially painful for... for someone with your history."

Both of his eyebrows climbed up toward his hairline. "I thought it was a kids' movie."

"It is," she agreed. "But - "

"What the hell could they possibly put in a kids' movie that's so bad you're afraid it might trigger _me_?"

She chewed her lip for a moment before blurting, "The two characters are best friends growing up until the hound gets taken away and trained to hunt foxes and when he comes back through a series of unfortunate circumstances he ends up hunting his friend and very nearly killing him."

There was a long silence before Bucky said, "I'm impressed. You didn't breathe at all during any of that, did you?"

Jemma covered her face with her hands.

He reached up, catching her wrists very gently in his metal hand, and pulled them down. "Hey," he said. "Don't be embarrassed. You were lookin' out for me. I appreciate it. And..." He paused, clearing his throat. "You're probably right. I probably shouldn't watch that movie. Ever. And Steve probably shouldn't, either; I'll pass the word on. So, see? You did me _and_ Captain America a big favor."

Jemma laughed softly. "I'll mark today down in my diary, shall I?"

"Yeah, you do that," he replied, grinning.

The moment was interrupted by a sudden yawn, and Jemma blushed. "I'm so sorry."

"Nah, don't be," Bucky waved it away. "We had a busy day today. Probably be busier tomorrow; Coulson says we're heading to Kamchatka after we drop the girls off in Westchester."

"Oh, busy indeed," Jemma said. "We'll need to go shopping."

Bucky blinked. "Okay, that one came at me outta nowhere," he admitted.

She grinned, reaching out to tweak his nose. "Where do you think the food on the bus comes from?"

"I... honestly hadn't thought about it," he admitted. "Logistics ain't my area of expertise."

"How fortunate for you that it needn't be," she replied, still grinning. "I might bring you along to do the heavy lifting, though."

"I'll be coming along anyway," he replied. "To do the security." He shook his head at her when she blinked in surprise. "You don't go anywhere without security. I thought that was standard protocol. It is in the Tower. Nobody that's soft goes out alone."

"Soft?" she repeated, feeling her shoulders square for battle.

He waved a hand. "A soft target," he expanded. "Scientists and support staff are always soft targets, unless they're Stark or Banner. All the ones in the Tower have panic buttons and stuff, and the ones who are in close contact with the Avengers never leave the Tower without security. Jane and Darcy never leave the tower without an Avenger."

"That sounds terribly restrictive," Jemma protested.

Bucky shrugged. "I get that. Darcy said the same thing. She used to try to duck out on her own. Only took about three weeks before HYDRA moved on her in broad daylight outside a Jewish bakery in Flatbush."

Jemma's eyes got huge. "How did she get away?"

Bucky snorted softly. "I said she _tried_ to duck out on her own. I didn't say she managed it. I didn't get to be the intelligence community's worst nightmare for over fifty years without knowing how to keep one dingy broad in headphones from knowin' I was tracking her." He smirked.

She cocked an eyebrow. "Does she know you call her that?"

"I called her that to her face after I got done handling the kidnap team." He grinned. "It's kinda how we got together."

Jemma's face flushed bright pink. _Of course he has a girlfriend, you idiot,_ she thought fiercely. Aloud, she only said, "Oh, I didn't know you were seeing anyone."

"I'm not, any more," he said, shifting to sit up properly, one leg curled beneath him and the other hanging off the side of the mattress. "It wasn't serious. She's not for me; she's been dizzy for Steve for a while. We were just... passing time."

"Ah," she said softly. "I can understand that."

He leaned back against the wall, clearly deep in thought. "We're a complicated bunch," he finally said. "Natalia - Natasha, I mean - and I have history, too, but it's ancient, and I don't remember it too clearly. Too many wipes between then and now. Although it might not all be permanent; Banner says with the way my brain's healing, I might still get more stuff back." He shrugged. "Anyway, getting back on topic, your shopping trip."

"Yes," Jemma said. "Well, I generally go alone. Sometimes Fitz goes with me, though less often since he was injured. And, as I said, if I need someone for the heavy lifting, I bring whoever's capable. Ward, before he turned; now Trip, or you."

Bucky frowned. "I'll talk to Coulson about that. You need to be more careful."

"I _am_ a full agent, you know."

"Yeah, but you're a scientist. If they came after you, you wouldn't be able to defend yourself." His jaw set stubbornly. "I'll talk to Coulson."

"You do that," Jemma replied, more amused than annoyed by his overprotectiveness. "I'm certain he'll tell you the same thing. He trusts us to handle ourselves, even now."

Bucky nodded. "I believe you," he said. He paused, studying her face, and then added, "You know it's not because I think you're stupid or helpless or something, right? Because Darcy said that at first, and it's not true."

"I'm aware," she responded. "And for what it's worth, I do appreciate your concern. I simply don't share it."

"I should let you talk to her," he muttered. "Maybe once she gets done tellin' you about that bunch of HYDRA goons and the equipment they were carrying in their van, you'll listen to me."

She shook her head, preparing to argue again, but interrupted herself with another wide yawn. "Oh, goodness," she muttered.

Chuckling, Bucky collected her laptop, folded away the table, and rose from the bed. He extended a hand to help her rise, and passed her the computer, then reached over and opened the door of his little cubicle. She stepped out and turned to face him, only to find him following her out. She raised an eyebrow, and he grinned. "I wouldn't be a gentleman if I didn't walk you to your door," he said. "And my Ma would come back from the dead to tan my hide."

"Well, then," she said. "By all means."

He followed her through the plane to another door just like his own. When she opened it and tossed her laptop onto her bed, he saw that the interior was just like his as well, though there were pictures taped to the walls and the bedding was a distinctly non-regulation vivid violet, unlike his own neutral grayish-blue. He grinned. "I like that."

She grinned back. "I needed the color."

"Well, I'll let you get your rest," he said. Then he took her hand, lifted it up, and pressed a kiss to the back of her knuckles. "I had a good time tonight," he said softly. "Thanks for comin' over and all."

She blushed bright pink. "So did I," she said. "Thank you for having me."

He released her and took several steps back, still smiling. "Good night, Jemma."

"Good night, Bucky." She stepped into her room and pulled the door shut.

With a broad grin and a jaunty whistle, Bucky headed back to his own room, ignoring the eyes that were fastened on him from another door just up the hallway. After he was gone, Fitz pushed his door all the way open and made his way out. He stumped up the hallway to Jemma's door and tapped on it, only barely restraining himself from banging.

When she pulled it open, her eyes were sparkling and her color high. "Did you forget - oh, Fitz! Hello."

"Jemma," he ground out. "What are you doing?"

She glanced over her shoulder at her cubicle. "Getting ready for bed?"

"I mean with him!"

She sighed. The color faded from her cheeks and she shifted, sitting down on the side of her bed and rubbing at her forehead for a moment, her eyes fixed on her knees. Finally, she looked up at him, and when she did, her face was sad. "Fitz," she said, "I'm sorry. I don't want to hurt your feelings, because I do care about you. Really, I do. You've been my best friend since we were eighteen. But this has to stop." She took a deep breath. "I heard what you said in the pod. I understood what you said in the pod. But I don't feel the same way about you. I never have. You're my best friend, and you've been like a brother to me, and I'm sorry that this is hurting you, but you have to stop."

He stared at her. "But..." He stopped, shaking his head. "But I thought..."

"What?" she said, keeping her voice as gentle as possible. "You thought, when you tried to die for me, that it would turn me into the heroine of some romantic drama and I'd suddenly fall into your arms?" She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Fitz. It doesn't work that way. In fact, it sort of works the opposite." Off his confusion, she explained, "I resented the hell out of you for doing that to me, Fitz. For a long time. I'm better about it now, but for a while, when you were still recuperating at the Playground, I really struggled with that. I had a lot of anger and a lot of guilt, and a lot more anger because of the guilt."

"I..." He paused and swallowed hard. "I didn't mean to..."

"I know. But you did. And since you got back on your feet, it seems as if you've expected things between us to change because of your declaration. I've tried to show you that wasn't going to happen, but it seems as though my actions don't speak loud enough. So these are my words. You are my best friend, Fitz, and I don't want to lose you. But I am not romantically interested in you, and that isn't going to change. So please... please stop."

He stood there staring at her for a long moment, his mouth slightly open in shock. She waited to see what, if anything, he would say, but he didn't speak at all, just stood there staring at her. Finally, she let out a soft sigh. "Go to bed, Fitz," she said gently. Then she reached out and closed the door between them.

He stood there in the darkened hallway for a very long time before turning around and stumping back to his own bed.


End file.
